Community News

Your ballot has been counted

By Pam Bacon

Logan County Clerk & Recorder

Posted:
11/07/2017 09:04:50 PM MST

Have you ever wondered what happens to your ballot when you return it to the Clerk's Office for an election? Ballots can be counted 15 days before Election Day, but no results are released until after 7 p.m. Election Night.

• First, the ballots are scanned in our system as returned and put into batches of 25.

• Each batch of ballots are signature verified — Signature Verification is when two judges of opposite affiliation compare the signature of the voter to the signature that we have captured on file.

• If the signature matches the ballot moves forward to envelope disassembly.

Pam Bacon County Clerk and Recorder

• If the ballot is rejected for signature verification because it cannot be matched, we are required by law to send a letter to the voter and ask them to verify their signature and provide us with a copy of their identification before we can count that ballot. If we don't receive any information from the voter about their signature the ballot remains rejected and not counted and we are required by law to turn that information over to the District Attorney for investigation for possible voter fraud.

Envelope disassembly: Processing the ballots to be tabulated in an assembly line format:

• Judge number one has the envelopes, address label down, and opens the envelope and hands the envelope and all contents to Judge number two.

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• Judge number two removes ballot in secrecy sleeve (if no secrecy sleeve add one) and hands secrecy sleeve with ballot to Judge three and stacks the envelopes, keeping them address label side down.

• Judge number three removes the ballot from the secrecy sleeve and hands the ballot to Judge number four.

• Judge number four flattens ballot and examines the ballot for tears or any other obvious flaw in the ballot. If so, it must be duplicated — at no time is the ballot content viewed! The judge examines the ballot and stacks them in piles of 25 and puts in order into a file folder for the machine judge to pick up.

• Machine judges count the ballots to make sure how many there are to be processed; shuffles the ballots to help with voter anonymity; numbers the ballots and then places the ballots into the ICC Scanner counting machine for pre-tabulation.

• At the end of each batch the machine judges and the supply judges match totals that were given by the Clerk and Recorder for the number of ballots to be processed.

• At the end of the day all ballots the machine judge numbers must match the supply judge numbers for ballots processed for the day before they are done.

• Then all ballots for that day are locked in a transfer box with a secured numbered seal and placed in the vault for security reasons.

•The supply judge then verifies with the Clerk and Recorder the number of ballots, received and processed for the day.

Logan County Offices will be closed the following days in November:

• Friday, Nov. 10 — Observance of Veteran's Day

• Thursday, Nov. 23 and Friday, Nov. 24 for the Thanksgiving hliday to allow our employees time to spend with their families.

BallotTrax is a free service for Logan County Voters that allows you to track the status of your ballot online, as well as receive messages by text, phone or email when your ballot has been sent to you and received by our Elections Division. Logan County voters may sign up at votelogancounty.ballottrax.net

The Election and Recording Department can be reached at 970-522-1544 for voter and election questions or recording information. The Motor Vehicle Department can be reached at 522-1158 for license plates/renewals or titling a vehicle. You can also reach our office by email at baconp@logancountyco.gov. Like us on Facebook at Logan County Elections/MotorVehicle/Recording or Twitter @LoganClerkCO.

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